AugmentED needed a brand that married education to video game culture and had the flexibility to grow with an expanding suite of products and services.
AugmentED believes that the best education is made possible through technology and data. This vision translates into a dream of creating a gamified, problem-based learning platform that tracks skills development.
Admittedly, it took me more than a minute to wrap my mind around such an inspired vision. But I consider myself lucky to have won the incredible opportunity to work with Mike Cutillo and Matthew Defranzo on developing this brand. Mike’s energy, optimism, and support made the project a true pleasure. We crossed paths serendipitously, and he ultimately approached me to help him brand his and Matthew’s vision. Doing so was especially critical since one of their key initiatives was to impress potential investors.
This project was all about threading the needle. And needles have tiny eyes! We needed to create a core brand that was consistent across sub-brands, but also scalable to future product offerings. Rounded, open forms and italics convey motion—the progressive aspects of the brand. Vivid colors help capture the company’s youthful energy.
The first sub-brand was Augment Esports. It runs camps dedicated to helping kids develop careers in Esports. This brand needed to appeal directly to youth and Esports culture.
We substituted lime green and black for the rich navy that typically accompanies the parent brand. Neon versions of the core brand colors maintain consistency while fitting gamer culture.
AugmentED’s primary passion is a STEM-focused gamified learning platform. The objective is to make learning more relevant, affordable, and accessible. This platform is called Augment Academy. Since the gamified platform would ultimately exist in a 3D world, we knew right away that all the Augment logos and icons should feel 3D.
AugmentED has many sub-brands, products, and stories to tell:
- Augment Esports: a career camp for esports enthusiasts
- Augment Academy: a learning platform product
- Augment Community: a service offering local computer resources to students
- Augment Tutors: an on-demand service connecting students to subject-specific tutors
- Augment Insights: an analytics tool that tracked student progress
As such, AugmentED’s leaders found it challenging to communicate a unified vision for its complete suite of services. To solve this problem, we worked together to introduce visual infographics that tell a cohesive story—one that helps investors visualize the holistic network that AugmentED is trying to build.
Understanding how a student interacts with Augment Academy—alongside its various products and services—was critical. This simple journey is designed to help AugmentED explain this experience to investors. Each of these visuals became critical assets in pitch decks.
